What Did the Critics Think of Nicole Sherzinger in 'Sunset Blvd?'

The New York Times, Jesse Green

"Despite Norma Desmond, who famously declares in the film 'Sunset Boulevard' that it's not her but 'the pictures that got small,' the opposite is true on Broadway these days. In musicals especially, video and projections have grown ever more dominant. Perhaps it is not so much an irony as an inevitability, then, that at the St. James Theater, where a revival of the musical based on 'Sunset Boulevard' opened on Sunday, the pictures — live video streamed onto an LCD screen more than 23 feet tall — are so big they almost blot out the show below.

"But alas, only almost.

"For despite many fascinating interventions by the director Jamie Lloyd and his technical team, and the fact that it is based on one of the greatest of movies, the musical remains too silly for words. In that sense, and others, Norma would have loved it."

Naveen Kumar; the Washington Post

"Youth is relative, and the company of director Jamie Lloyd's electrifying revival of the musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, transferring to Broadway from London's West End, drips with a cutting-edge L.A. cool that would make anyone feel they need to scramble to keep up. When Norma says 'it's the pictures that got small,' she could be referring to social media and the glut of competition to stand out...

"Lloyd, whose typical stripped-down style was last seen on Broadway in 'A Doll's House,' here plunges deep into noir. The setting is a psychic dungeon, with stark shadows and reflective haze marking the warp in Norma's self-perception. (The set and Jil Sander-chic costumes are by Soutra Gilmour; the arresting lighting is by Jack Knowles.) The focus is on bodies in space (the athletic and libidinous choreography is by Fabian Aloise) and the sheer bigness of the sound.

"This being Lloyd Webber, that bigness will send your hair flying to the back row. Orchestrations by the composer and David Cullen are bright and muscular, with swelling strings and brassy crescendos thrashing like a storm at sea. (Alan Williams is the music supervisor and director.) Sleek head mics are visible accessories, and sound designer Adam Fisher pulls off the technical feat of rattling but not splitting eardrums..."

Patrick Ryan, USA Today

"The revival, which opened Sunday at New York's St. James Theatre, is already shaping up to be a word-of-mouth hit stateside. And for good reason: Scherzinger is every bit as stunning and volcanic as you've heard, even if Jamie Lloyd's hollow production doesn't always match her earthshaking talent...

"Like the film, the show doesn't try to hide that things end badly. (Joe literally climbs out of a body bag in the gloomy opening moments.) But Norma's descent into harrowing, blood-soaked mania is a wonder to behold in Scherzinger's more-than-capable hands. Taking the reins from Glenn Close, who originated the role on Broadway, Scherzinger brings an almost alien quality to Norma, whose strange poise and aloofness masks much deeper, repressed trauma. She can be vampy and volatile, but also quietly devastating.

"The singer earned midshow standing ovations for both of Norma's signature ballads: 'With One Look' and 'As If We Never Said Goodbye,' both of which Scherzinger delivered with breathtaking power and bravura. But perhaps her finest moment was the more subdued 'New Ways to Dream,' as Norma is tearfully confronted by her younger self (Hannah Yun Chamberlain) in a tight close-up, which is filmed live and projected onto a giant backdrop. It's a striking juxtaposition, and Scherzinger hauntingly conveys Norma's fear, fragility and longing as she stares down the barrel of her life."

Vulture, Sarah Holdren

"... I dared myself to come into Lloyd's revival of Lloyd Webber's 1993 megamusical 'Sunset Blvd.' with a wide-open mind. And this production is indeed remarkable, at least on its charged-up, sweat-slicked surface. If you spend any time at all following the hypes and hysterias of theater and its accompanying Twitterverse, it will hardly surprise you to hear that this Sunset is more of a solar flare, sometimes quite literally blinding its audience. ..

"There's nothing floating or aloof, however, about Scherzinger's performance. With no armor to depend on (I kept wondering if she's cold in that little black sheath or if Knowles's lights and her own nerves generate enough heat), her Norma is gargantuan and almost feral. She charges head first at the famous lines ('I am big. It's the pictures that got small'), delivering them with a cavernous boom. She's not dignified — she's so big that she seems to be ripping her own seams. But she's also got a wily little sense of humor, a giggling, contemporary-coded bounce and wiggle that come out especially when the cameras are around. She whips her hair back and forth and flashes duck-lips for the onstage paparazzi, even throwing some splits and twerks into the mix. It's surprisingly funny, and also tinged with sadness: Here's a woman who may have lost the better part of her mind, but not the part that's entirely aware of how the kids are telegraphing sexiness these days, even as those kids have no idea who she is.

"The pop singer in Scherzinger can also do a thrilling range of things with her voice. There's nothing classical in the way she bites into the songs — she simply devours them, ricocheting between vulnerable tremblings and voracious howls. Lloyd mics the bejesus out of his shows (here with sound designer Adam Fisher), and the results are mixed: Yes, it's exciting for Scherzinger to be able to go internal, her breathy whispers beamed into our ears, but on the loud end, the organic power of her voice is eaten by the amplification. When she belts, it's thunderous, but there's also a mechanical buzz to the sound...

"... There's no doubt that Lloyd's Sunset dazzles in the beholding, though the farther you walk away from it, the more you may find yourself feeling like poor Joe Gillis — remembering the thrill but no longer able to feel it, somehow both stirred and empty. Hooray for Hollywood!"

New York Post; Johnny Oleksinski

"... .Sunset Boulevard,' which opened Sunday night at the St. James Theatre, is Broadway's most exhilarating show in years.

"So much energy, freshness and unrelenting intensity courses through the veins of director Jamie Lloyd's startling production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical from beginning to end, you'd swear it was brand new.

"And adrenaline pumps through our bloodstream anytime the extraordinary Nicole Scherzinger, making her wondrous Broadway debut, wails a note. ...

"The entire production leaves you breathless. We're transfixed from the moment the giant video screen — this staging's chandelier — descends from the rafters bearing the image of actor Tom Francis' dangerous eyes as struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis drives toward his doom...

"But the show belongs to the titanic Scherzinger, who makes an especially proud and feral Norma. Her confidence and burning desire to succeed makes her fall much greater than that of a dusty hermit.

"It occurred to me, while watching her fluid arms as she sang 'As If We Never Said Goodbye,' that the actress was channelling Michael Crawford's ghoulish, lovesick Phantom..."

New York Observer; David Cote

"The latest revival of 'Sunset Boulevard' — glossily stark and aggressively meta — puts several shades of lipstick on a pig. 'Shades' being black, white, and red. 'Pig' being a musical that may be one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's better efforts but remains a bloated, subtlety-free slab of pop melodrama. Director Jamie Lloyd and his chic design team immerse Webber's 1994 adaptation of the movie classic in a vertiginous zone of inky surfaces and white highlights, all swaddled in incessant billows of stage fog. Soutra Gilmour's modish costumes are likewise monochromatic, as is her sparse scenic design — essentially a cavernous camera obscura. When the threat of murder arises, lighting designer Jack Knowles floods the stage in a scarlet wash. By the end of the action (slight spoiler), fallen star Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger) is a gothic vision: glowing olive-toned skin, black silk slip, and neck streaked in gore. The remarkable thing about this brutally regimented palette is how it helps distract from the music...

"In her Broadway debut, the leading lady grows on you. In contrast to audience members who stood and screamed every time Scherzinger blasted out one of Norma's obligatory, overheated ballads ('With One Look,' 'As If We Never Said Goodbye'), I went in with minimal expectations. Happily, Scherzinger commands her scenes — on stage and blown up to gargantuan proportions on the 27′ x 23′ LCD screen fed live video by actors strapped into camera units.

"Scherzinger may begin tentative and stiff, but soon she's vamping and pouting for the camera like a giddy teenager with her first TikTok account. When Norma talks astrology with Joe, she adopts a goofy Valley Girl vocal fry. Is Norma aware of her eccentric excesses, or is that Scherzinger and Lloyd commenting on it? The anachronistic, self-mocking gestures extend to the choreography. Fabian Aloise gives Scherzinger cheeky quotes from the Pussycat Dolls's synchronized strutting. Scrawled somewhere in my notes is 'Norma twerks?' If it weren't horribly outdated to say postmodern, that's how I would describe Scherzinger's delightful pastiche."

Time Out, New York; Adam Feldman

"... One of the ironies built into Billy Wilder's film, which he co-wrote with Charles Brackett, is that there really was an audience in the dark watching Norma: the audience of 'Sunset Boulevard' itself, whom Norma is effectively addressing directly in her operatic final mad scene. That slippage between the real and the imaginary is even more pronounced in Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1993 musical adaptation of the story, by dint of its being performed live onstage. And Jamie Lloyd's very meta and very smart Broadway revival of the show—which stars the utterly captivating Nicole Scherzinger as Norma and Tom Francis as Joe Gillis, the handsome sell-out screenwriter drawn into her web—pushes it even further through the prominent use of live video. The tension between the real and the imaginary is expanded to include a mediating element: the filmic, whose form can range from documentary to dreamscape.

"Thus described, Lloyd's approach may sound academic — but in practice, it is often thrilling. The original production was famous for the lavish excess of its set and costumes. Here, by contrast, designer Soutra Gilmour's set is mostly blank space, and she costumes the cast in basic modern black-and-white streetwear, sometimes with athletic socks pulled high. (When the ensemble performs Fabian Aloise's sharp choreography, it looks a bit like an updated Gap ad.) Even Norma wears just a satiny black slip; this is Sunset, stripped. But you don't miss the frills: Jack Knowles's excellent lighting — and the video design by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom — fill out the scenes with ample film-noir atmospherics and help Lloyd shape the staging for maximum narrative and emotional impact. Not for nothing has the title been tightened to 'Sunset Blvd.' ...

"... Scherzinger commands the stage with electrifying confidence. Her singing is gorgeously fluid and controlled, and she knows how to work her songs for drama; singing 'I've come home at last,' she holds her note on 'home' for more than 10 full seconds, earning thunderous claps when she wraps it up. But her silences are as important as the notes. Later in 'As If We Never Said Goodbye,' she takes a long pause after singing "so much to live for," and I heard a few actual gasps. In 'With One Look,' she gets applause just for striking a pose between verses, steadfast as the figure on the mast of a ship."

The Wrap; Robert Hofler

"... Photographs from the West End production made it clear that Scherzinger wasn't wearing Norma's signature turban, nor was she made up to look like some old gargoyle a la Gloria Swanson in the film or Glenn Close on stage. In this revival, Norma is now 40, not 50. Her hair is straight and long. She wears a simple black dress. The sets and costume by Soutra Gilmour are a sophisticated study in chiaroscuro, a nod to the black-and-white film that is the musical's source material.

"For me, the big surprise of this 'Sunset Blvd.' is Scherzinger's outrageously campy over-the-top performance. Like so much of this revival, it is both minimal and excessive. Her look is minimal while her acting goes way beyond anything delivered by either Swanson or Close, neither of whom offered particularly subtle studies in mature womanhood.

"When Scherzinger sings, she comes up with drag queen gestures that haven't been seen since Susan Hayward lip-synched 'I'll Plant My Own Tree' in 'Valley of the Dolls.'

"She's also horny. When Gloria Swanson's Norma invites William Holden's Joe McGillis to spend the night in a bedroom above her garage, it is not obvious that she's on the make. Scherzinger, on the other hand, delivers the invitation with such Cruella de Vil lust that she gets a big laugh from the audience...

"... A former Pussycat Doll, Scherzinger has the vocal chops to make showstoppers of 'With One Look' and 'As If We Never Said Goodbye.' The sound pouring out of rock stadium size amps at the St. James is much like that of the Pussycats: lush, loud, homogenized and processed with excessive reverb. But that's not enough: when Scherzinger sings, she's suddenly enveloped in billowing fog. It's a not-so-subtle reminder that this story is set in smoggy Los Angeles."

Deadline; Greg Evans

"All that madness in Gloria Swanson's eyes at the end of Billy Wilder's 1950 masterpiece 'Sunset Boulevard' is amplified to breathtaking lengths in Jamie Lloyd's commanding and gorgeous renovation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1993 musical 'Sunset Blvd.' With a career-expanding performance that redefines the one-time 'Dancing With The Stars' competitor Nicole Scherzinger as thoroughly as Lloyd's staging does Lloyd Webber's musical, the revival opening tonight at Broadway's St. James Theatre is a stunner, stark always, funny sometimes and ultimately terrifying...

"... The current revival, if it does nothing else, should put the show's mixed reputation to rest. With its silent movie-style black & white color scheme and heavy-shadowed expressionistic sculpting, 'Sunset Blvd.' is quite unlike anything else on Broadway today, fierce and ferocious. ...

"... And while some have criticized the stunning 46-year-old Scherzinger's casting as Hollywood's most famous tossed-aside star this side of Baby Jane Hudson, the former Pussycat Doll's presence makes Wilder's original point all the more forcefully: When those on-stage cameras zoom in for merciless close-ups, silently comparing the results side-by-side on the screen with the much younger actress (Hannah Yun Chamberlain) playing Norma in her youth, the effect underscores just how stringent and misogynistic and insane Hollywood's — and society's — codes of beauty truly are."

The Hollywood Reporter; David Rooney

"... So how does 'Sunset Blvd.', as the show is titled here, hold up without all the gilded grandeur that allowed Norma to remain locked inside her fantasy of eternal stardom? Magnificently, it turns out. Despite a few full-ensemble numbers of varying effectiveness, Lloyd has chiseled what was once a behemoth into a chamber musical for four characters, ingeniously designed in atmospheric black and white, like the Wilder film, until murder bathes the stage in blood red.

"I'll confess I've always thought of 'Sunset Boulevard' as a second-rate musical elevated by a couple of great songs and by the glorious scenery-chomping opportunities it affords its leading ladies. This is the first time I've really considered it as a searing tragedy with something to say to contemporary audiences. Its reflections on the cruelty of aging and obsolescence, the addictive allure of fame, the currency of youth and beauty and the sad refuge of madness have never carried such sting. ...

"... Scherzinger's roof-raising vocal power, especially on the musical's signature songs, 'With One Look' and 'As If We Never Said Goodbye,' is astonishing, literally stopping the show with her soaring money notes and dramatic key changes. She's the rare Norma who has the supple dance moves, too. Her command is never in doubt, and Lloyd provides unimpeded access to her every emotion by frequently giving Norma what she craves most — a camera and a closeup...

"... Her Norma has the melodramatic largeness of the silent era — eyes blazing, fingers splayed and arms held so tautly we see every sinew. But there's also a rich vein of sardonic humor and camp. That aspect recedes as the pathos creeps in, gradually building to an unhinged crescendo. As she's driven to murder, the star's long sheath of black hair makes her appear like a possessed woman right out of J-horror.

"The victim of that homicide, for the TCM-averse who have never seen the brilliant Wilder film, is unemployed screenwriter Joe Gillis. That's no spoiler, given that the movie opened with William Holden floating face-down, dead in Norma's swimming pool, while Lloyd starts the show with Tom Francis' Joe unzipping himself from a body bag. He promises to tell us 'the real story,' not the version splashed over the tabloids.

"The excellent Francis — who like all four principals is reprising his role from London — finds an ideal balance between Joe's cynical opportunism and his charm. In a way, he's hardly worse than emotionally manipulative Norma, who's always ready with a suicide attempt to ensure that she keeps her kept man."

Cititour; Brian Scott Lipton

"We're back to that famed boulevard of broken dreams but things look very different today on 'Sunset Boulevard' (now at the St. James Theatre) than they did in the last two Broadway incarnations of this famed musical adapted from Billy Wilder's legendary 1950 film. Indeed, in British director Jamie Lloyd's, super-stripped-down production, gone are the grand staircase, the lavish costumes, or any notion the physical sense of Old Hollywood that dominated Trevor Nunn's 1994 production.

"In fact, there's nothing to look at here except the faces of this production's players — most notably, the amazing Nicole Scherzinger in a killer performance as silent movie goddess Norma Desmond and the equally great Tom Francis as her eventual paramour, the money-hungry screenwriter Joe Gillis -- often blown-up to larger-than-life proportions via live capture projections (by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom).

"And these two stars do, to quote the script, have faces. And voices. And presence. A singer of phenomenal power and range, Scherzinger hits and holds the notes written by Andrew Lloyd Webber in a way that can induce gasps (not to mention two mid-show standing ovations at my performance). Better yet, she also brings an incredible intentionality to the song's lyrics (by Christopher Hampton and Don Black) as if she's thought for years about the meaning of every single word that comes out of her mouth, especially in her showstoppers 'With One Look' and 'As If We Never Said Goodbye.'

"Incredibly lithe and youthful looking in a simple black slip, Scherzinger has a bit of a challenge in creating Norma's character arc. She's no aged, faded beauty, but since she's clearly been discarded by Hollywood (as many were during the age of talking pictures), it's understandable that she has literally gone a bit stir-crazy in her Hollywood mansion, with only her pet monkey (who dies as the show begins) and her 'servant' Max (a brilliantly menacing David Thaxton) for company."

Variety; Daniel D'Addario

"Scherzinger's performance as a fallen idol desperate to reclaim her fame is many things, among them a coming-out party for a performer whose plainly evident raw talent has long outstripped her ability to find a landing place in the entertainment industry. (Audience members will likely recall her from her role as the lead singer of the now-defunct girl group Pussycat Dolls or from her work as a reality-show judge.) It is also a capital-E Event, a thrill ride whose greatest pleasure may be that, under the direction of Jamie Lloyd, Scherzinger's work exists within a production as bold as she is. Norma Desmond's problem, as she tells us upon her entrance, is that she is big, but the pictures have gotten small. No such problem here. Scherzinger and the stage she inhabits push each other to grand extremes. The result is something like magic.

"... Scherzinger has plainly been waiting for the right stage, and she puts every bit of fierceness and charisma into proving herself. In the show's two signature numbers, both of them Norma's declarations of her own worthiness, Scherzinger stands at center stage and belts with shocking vocal power and agility, surrounded by purgatorial swirls of smoke and blown out by that Lloydian white light. In its diva-forward, astonishingly unabashed embrace of pure drama and elemental emotion, the framing looks like the way a Hollywood filmmaker would envision a career-making Broadway turn. It feels like the role Norma and Scherzinger both were born to play. And it transports us into Norma's mind, as we finally see the way that Norma sees herself."